Here There Be Dragons

So, Shannon & I may have gotten some new pets in the last week – two yellow phase central bearded dragons! We’ve been talking about getting reptiles for a long time, and just haven’t quite gotten there. But then these two lovely ladies, their enclosure & everything that we needed for a full reptile set-up came up on the Clermont Buy/Swap/Sell page, and we went for a look. I have to admit that I fell in love with the girls as soon as we saw them. They are extremely well socialized – you can pick them up, hold them, pat them, and let them crawl around on your shirt.

Looking after reptiles can be a pretty big learning curve. They can be very particular about their food, and you need to pay close attention to the temperature in their enclosure. Shannon & I were driving home on every one of our breaks from work this week to check on the temperature in their tank until we managed to hook up a thermostat to regulate the temperature automatically. We’ve also had to keep an eye on their water intake – apparently dragons can be pretty silly animals, and will sometimes be too lazy to actually drink, even if they become dehydrated.

Here’s a few snaps of our girls (who still need names by the way, just in case anyone has some suggestions):

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8 Comments

I’m so jealous! I want some too, they would be good apartment pets too I bet? I don’t think lizards as fabulous as these gals would be legal in nz. Although I can’t say I’m got any idea as to what a good name would be.

I don’t know about NZ laws specifically but apparently bearded dragons are pretty popular pets all over the world! In Australia you’ve got to get a Reptile Licence before you can keep them though. I reckon they’d be good apartment pets, although they do drive up your power bill a bit with the heating & cooling costs.

Beardies are great little lizards! We used to raise them for a local pet shop. And no reptile license needed here in the states.

As for the power bill, we didn’t see much of an increase when we only had our adults. Whenever we had a clutch of eggs incubating or babies in their own tanks, then yeah, we saw an increase in our power bill.

Oh, it must have been really interesting to have eggs and babies! Shannon would really like to consider breeding our girls eventually.

I think the worst thing for our power bill is the Australian Summer, especially living in Central QLD – during the hottest days of the Summer we need to run the air-conditioning in the dragons room pretty much constantly so that the tank won’t over heat (we’re talking 40+ degrees Celsius days)!